olden_undercover
Well-Known Member
Lizards? Toilet brushes?
When I was 15, I worked for a guy who raised rabbits, pigs, and Holstein calves. He had a buyer in CA for the rabbits, and sold the pigs and calves at local auction. My job was pretty simple: Feed them. Calves sometimes get sick with a condition that farmers call "scours"-- basically the worst diarrhea you can imagine. Often, regardless of treatment, the animal becomes dehydrated, can't hold anything down, and simply wastes away until it dies. I had been keeping my eye on one calf that had been fighting scours for about a week. One morning, I went to his pen and found him lying on the ground, eyes glossed over, breath rattling in his throat. He was done. I went to the building that held the rabbits. The guy was in there shoveling the mounds of round rabbit turds out from under cages into one pile. I told him about the calf. He shook his head and said, "Follow me". We went to the tool shed. He reached up, took down a ball-peen hammer, handed it to me and said, "Take care of it". Not a gun, but a ball-peen hammer. "Hit him good and hard, right between the eyes, so he doesn't suffer", he said. Back at the calf's pen, I found myself standing in ****-covered straw, looking down at this dying baby. With my stomach in a knot, I grabbed him by one ear, drew back, and swung as hard as I could. The first strike, the calf started flailing and bawling with every bit of life still in him. A hit him a second time, then a third, and then I stopped counting. At some point he quit struggling. The raspy breathing stopped. He was dead. I lifted him over the front panel of his pen and dragged him by one leg to the edge of the road, where a truck would come by later to pick him up. He would be made into dog food or something similar. I went back to the shed and returned the hammer. I went to the guy and told him it was done, and went back to feeding the animals.
That is every day on a farm.
When I was 15, I worked for a guy who raised rabbits, pigs, and Holstein calves. He had a buyer in CA for the rabbits, and sold the pigs and calves at local auction. My job was pretty simple: Feed them. Calves sometimes get sick with a condition that farmers call "scours"-- basically the worst diarrhea you can imagine. Often, regardless of treatment, the animal becomes dehydrated, can't hold anything down, and simply wastes away until it dies. I had been keeping my eye on one calf that had been fighting scours for about a week. One morning, I went to his pen and found him lying on the ground, eyes glossed over, breath rattling in his throat. He was done. I went to the building that held the rabbits. The guy was in there shoveling the mounds of round rabbit turds out from under cages into one pile. I told him about the calf. He shook his head and said, "Follow me". We went to the tool shed. He reached up, took down a ball-peen hammer, handed it to me and said, "Take care of it". Not a gun, but a ball-peen hammer. "Hit him good and hard, right between the eyes, so he doesn't suffer", he said. Back at the calf's pen, I found myself standing in ****-covered straw, looking down at this dying baby. With my stomach in a knot, I grabbed him by one ear, drew back, and swung as hard as I could. The first strike, the calf started flailing and bawling with every bit of life still in him. A hit him a second time, then a third, and then I stopped counting. At some point he quit struggling. The raspy breathing stopped. He was dead. I lifted him over the front panel of his pen and dragged him by one leg to the edge of the road, where a truck would come by later to pick him up. He would be made into dog food or something similar. I went back to the shed and returned the hammer. I went to the guy and told him it was done, and went back to feeding the animals.
That is every day on a farm.
and my husband takes care of the rest. 
a quick gun shot to the head would have been better. Although was it not given antibiotics or anything? Scours are usually not a death sentence.